LiveDifferent Challenge (35): Butt In

We live in such a funny culture, where we can share extremely close spaces with people without even acknowledging their existence.  In fact, I’d say we are a culture that avoids–at all–cost unncessary interaction with strangers.  And I’m probably chief of sinners in this department.

For example, I am a devoted U-Scan user.  I love the U-Scan.  The line is always shorter, and I don’t have to make small talk. I can scan my own stuff and be out the door before Dutch grabs anything off the tabloid rack.  It’s fabulous.  My natural tendency is just to stay to myself.

This week a couple things stick out in my mind.  First, I tried the U-Scan at Haggan. It’s new, and I was in a hurry, with Jeff and Dutch waiting in the car. I only had milk and eggs. U-Scan here I come. Unfortunately the system still had some kinks in it, so it ended up taking a ridiculous amount of time, and help from the U-Scan clerk, scanning and rescanning.  In the end it wouldn’t take my Haggan card so we had to take my entire order over to her scanner and re-do the whole thing the old-fashioned way.  I had to laugh at myself.  Trying to be as efficient as possible, doing things on my own, without any unncessary human interaction–and I wound up slower than ever chatting it up with the 20-something girl cashier. And you know what? I left more cheerful than ever, because she was an absolutely delight, a doll, and somehow made me feel like helping me was her very favorite thing in the world to do. Hmm.

Wednesday I took Dutch to the playground. Again, love the time alone.  He plays happily and I can stare, think, pray, just be alone.  Well this week there was a group of moms there.  Seeing that they were already a group, I parked his stroller a ways away, let Dutch go play, then sat off to the corner and watched him crawling and climbing. Before I knew it, they had joined me–chatty and cheerful and friendly.  Before I knew it we had all exchanged names, the boys were sharing toys, and next thing I knew they were at the picnic tables for snack and Dutch was asking to join them…so we did.  Ends up one of the girls and I went to high school together, and before I left we had exchanged numbers and the kids had a blast. The next day at library story time they were there–and we sat together while the kids listened to books.  Also at story time I spotted one of my middle school teachers.  Instead of saying hi I pretended I didn’t see him. Why am I so ridiculous?  He spied me and came and gave me a big hug, met Dutch, and caught up on how my parents are doing.  It was great.  So why do I never make the first move?

Last night Jeff and I took Dutch for a walk and went by Fred Meyer’s to get Dutch some mittens.  On our way out, he was throwing a fit because he had to get out of the Car-Cart he was driving.  As he sobbed in his stroller and I tried to pretend I couldn’t hear him, an older lady walked along side him and started talking to him: “Why are you so sad?” She started.  Oh great, I thought, She thinks I’m a bad mom because he’s sobbing, little does she know he does this every time we leave the Car-Cart.  But then she started making faces at him and laughing and just being silly with him.  Before I knew it, Dutch was smiling and laughing and flirting and had totally forgotten about the Car.  She smiled and walked off to her car.  “Thank you,” I called after her. She just smiled.

But the incident that convicted both Jeff and me to the core happened yesterday at my prenatal visit. After my appointment, which was, as always, quick and easy–I have the most-noneventful wonderful pregnancies, I pretty much go in, weigh myself, have my belly measured and go home.  We take it for granted that I and Heidi are both so healthy up to this point.  Afterwards we got on the elevator, and a punk-looking kid with sagging jeans, filthy jacket, and stocking cap followed us on. He couldn’t have been more than 19 or 20.  He was dialing his cell phone. When the doors closed he began talking, “Yeah man, I’m here at the hospital…yeah she woke up having contractions and…” and I’ll spare you the details but went on to share that basically it sounds like she was hemmoraging horribly and it sounded grim.  My heart skipped and my whole body tensed up.  The door opened and we walked out, and he followed.  As we headed out the hospital door, he hung up the phone.  I glanced back at him and tried to give a sympathetic smile, but he was deep in thought and walked around the corner of the building. 

“Oh my gosh.”  Jeff looked down at me.  We got in the car and started to pray for the baby, for the mom, for that poor kid who was probably scared out of his wits.  We drove home and I thought of her often that day and prayed when it came to mind.  Last night Jeff crawled into bed.  He lay there on his back, silently, as I curled up next to him on my side.

“We should have talked to that kid, hon.” I knew exactly what he meant.  “It was wrong that we just walked off.  How can I be a pastor if I don’t pastor the people God brings across my path?” 

“I know, hon. I didn’t know what to say. Let’s pray for him now.”  And so we did. But I knew Jeff was right. What prevented us from just saying, “Hey man, are you ok?  Can we pray for you? Can we do anything for you?”  Even if he got mad or shrugged us off, it would still have been the right thing to do. 

What did these things teach me?  That we need to butt in a little more.  The truth is, that woman at Fred Meyer blessed me so much, just by being willing to step into my stressful sphere and make Dutch smile, rather than keeping her distance and saying, “Oh my that mom sure needs to control her son.”  The girls at the park blessed me beyond words by their friendliness.  And oh that we would have stepped in to that poor kid’s life and offered to encourage and support him.  I pray that next time we have the chance we will make a different choice…and choose to butt in a little.

So while I’m the queen of keeping to myself, I’m praying for grace to learn the art of gracefully butting in.  “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Phil. 2:4).  Lord let us learn to butt in for Your glory. Amen.